Johnny Kelly's Quotes

An organization's intelligence is distributed to the point of being ubiquitous.

In a broad systems sense, an organism's environment is indistinguishable from the organism itself.

Managing bottom-up change is its own art.

It's more along the lines of raising a child: we train the system to a certain range of behaviors that we find most useful. But then we let it go, because we don't want to have to be babysitting it the whole time.

An organization is a set of relationships that are persistent over time.

Changing things from the top down works when things are stable.

Complexity that works is built up out of modules that work perfectly, layered one over the other.

Each organism's environment, for the most part, consists of other organisms.

Each system is trying to anticipate change in the environment.

Everything that we are making, we are making more and more complex.

It's generally much easier to kill an organization than to change it substantially.

Much of outcomes research is a systematic attempt to exploit what is known and make it better.

One of the functions of an organization, of any organism, is to anticipate the future, so that those relationships can persist over time.

Organisms by their design are not made to adapt too far.

Species go extinct because there are historical contraints built into a given body or a given design.

Technological advances could allow us to see more clearly into our own lives.

The most certain thing you can say about the environment tomorrow is that it probably is going to be just like today, for the most part.

The most interesting thing about change in the environment is that for the most part the environment isn't changing.

The organization and the environment are in concert.

The way that organizations and organisms anticipate the future is by taking signals from the past, most the time.

The way to build a complex system that works is to build it from very simple systems that work.

An organization's reason for being, like that of any organism, is to help the parts that are in relationship to each other, to be able to deal with change in the environment.

There are a lot of dedicated people out there that don't get the recognition that we get, but they're as important as the people that are sitting in the vehicle.

A trip to space is a big motivator to give up some things in your personal life. Obviously, you can't give up everything and you don't want to.

He's working a lot harder than I am. I tell these people that we really appreciate what they're doing for us.

There's a lot of interest there in the missions that I fly on and the ones my brother's involved with.

Three of us will help the other two get suited up, get them in the hatch, and get them out the door.

We're doing a lot of inspection on the leading edge of our wing on 114 and 121, the first two flights.

Well, I have an undergraduate degree, a couple of bachelor's degrees, from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.

You look at it as a privilege. So you really decide that you're going to put the time in and work really hard to get to the point where you're ready.

After the loss of Columbia a couple of years ago, I think we were reminded of the risk. All of us, though, have always known that the Space Shuttle is a very risky vehicle, much more risky than even flying airplanes in combat.

Having the benefit to our society, not only here in the United States but throughout the world with the amount of invention you get from having a space program, is well worth the risk that an individual like myself has to take by flying in the vehicle.

I personally believe this Agency has always been very dedicated and has always worked as hard as it possibly can to do things as safely and as effectively as possible.

I think I was very interested in the space program as a kid, watching the first Apollo missions to the moon, and it's something I thought that would be a lot of, of fun and exciting and a very worthwhile job.

I think we've done that. But it's not something you really notice, 'cause I've always thought the people here have always done their best, and they continue to do their best. They just might do it a little bit differently.

I'll be helping them getting suited up, getting them in the airlock, getting the airlock prepared, and getting them out the hatch, and then talking them through these three spacewalks.

It's important to bring things back from the Space Station because, unlike somebody living at the house where the garbage truck comes by twice a week, they don't have that in space.

Later, after flying in the Navy for four or five years, spending some time on an aircraft carrier, I applied to and was accepted in a program where I went to graduate school first and then to the Naval Test Pilots School.

My family deals with those risks. The best I can do is talk to them about some of those risks. I'm not incredibly specific with them, especially with my kids.

The first two missions have some test objectives, some new capabilities that we're going to try to develop on orbit to possibly be used on later flights.

There's been a lot of discussion about NASA culture and changing that. I think our culture has always been one of trying to do a very difficult job and do it well.

Well, right now we're so busy that I kind of had to put all the hobbies on hold. But I like going camping with my kids. I have two daughters; they're 7 and 10 years old.